8/11/2010 @ 6:00PM

Billionaire Universities

Even in tough economic times the wealthiest Harvard grads are prospering.

Over the past year the number of Harvard alumni who are billionaires swelled to 62, up from 54 last year, more than any other American university by a long shot.

Talk about good connections: A significant number of these 10-figure titans were classmates. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and oil and banking tycoon George Kaiser graduated from Harvard Business School in 1966, while hedge fund chief Bruce Kovner received a B.A. that year and private-equity kingpin David Bonderman a law degree. Meg Whitman of
eBay
and subprime short winner Jeffrey Greene graduated from the business school in 1979, while Apollo Management’s Leon Black and Hamilton James of Blackstone earned M.B.A.s in 1975. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a billionaire M.B.A. alumnus told Forbes that the business school’s system of dividing the student body into sections afforded A+ networking opportunities: “You leave with 120 close relationships.” He says he’s still in touch with most of his section mates.

In second place on our list of the schools that have turned out the most billionaires is Stanford with 28 billionaire graduates, up from 25 last year. The school has many graduates who have made it big in Silicon Valley, including Jerry Yang, who cofounded
Yahoo
while a grad student, and
Google
founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Sun cofounder Vinod Khosla and
Gap
Chairman Robert Fisher were classmates, graduating with M.B.A.s in 1980.
Nike
founder Philip Knight earned an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1962 and reportedly made a quiet return to campus a few years ago to take creative writing and English classes.

Columbia is in third place with 20 billionaire graduates, up from 16 last year, including private-equity pioneer Henry Kravis and hedge fund tycoons Louis Bacon and Leon Cooperman. Cooperman used to carpool to business school with classmate Mario Gabelli, now a billionaire as well. The son of a plumber, Cooperman credits the Ivy League school with putting him in a mold” and giving him credentials to trade with,” helping him to land a job at
Goldman Sachs
, where he rose to head the asset management division.

To go with its 85 Nobel Prize laureates, the University of Chicago can boast 13 billionaire graduates, up from 10 last year, placing the school sixth on our list. U. of C. billionaires include Thomas Pritzker, William Conway and David Rubenstein.

New entrants to the list this year are New York University, in a tie for eighth place with 10 billionaire alumni and Princeton University, in a tie for 10th with 9.

Schools with billionaire grads stand a chance to reap benefits down the road.
Home Depot
cofounder Kenneth Langone earned an M.B.A. in a part-time program from NYU; he later became a heavy donor to the school, and now the program is named after him, as is the school’s medical center. Phil Knight pledged $105 million for the Knight Management Center at Stanford’s business school. Hedge fund honcho Stephen Mandel has helped guide the investment strategy of Dartmouth College and was recently elected chairman of the board of trustees.

Of course, a degree from Harvard or Stanford isn’t a prerequisite to becoming a billionaire. Of last year’s Forbes 400 at least 41 billionaires did not have a college degree.